Sunday 6 November 2011

Weather in OrchardyHaven

Thanks to the Permaculture Association for this link to Weatherspark.com. You can get all sorts of information, but I didn't expect to be able to find weather data so close to Sadowo (it's actually from Grodno airport, 50km away).

Here's a graph showing the average temperatures through the year, in comparison with Wakefield:


A few things jump out. First, I've stupidly cut off the x-axis, but it starts at the beginning of January and ends at the end of December. The Wakefield data is is blue, and the Sadowo data is grey. The thicker horizontal grey line is zero. From the beginning of December to early March the average temperature in Sadowo is below zero, in fact for two months the average high never gets above zero! By contrast in Wakefield the average never gets down to zero. From the beginning of April to the end of September though the average temperature in Sadowo is higher than Wakefield.

There are also graphs of wind (much higher on average all through the year in Wakefield), humidity (higher in Wakefield all through summer, similar in Winter), and cloud (seems much cloudier in Sadowo).

To have a look for yourself, here's a link to the weather data charts for Sadowo.

Lammas Eco-Building Course

Back in September, just before we went to Poland, I went off to Lammas Eco-Village in Pembrokeshire to get some practical experience, meet a few like-minded people, and get more prepared for all the building work ahead of us...

I went on one of the Eco-Building courses run by Nigel & Cassie Lishman at Plas Helyg ('Willow Mansion'). We designed and planned and put together a roundwood timber frame for a barn, and we built part of a cob greenhouse, finishing off the foundations and building up to above window height. Here are a couple of photos (thanks to Jenny for taking much more artistic photos than me!):
 

It was a great week. I felt really welcomed and all the other people on the course were very friendly. It was great getting my hands in the cob mix and practising roundwood framing. I felt I learned quite a lot, and I came away feeling much more confident about our project.